


Black Widow

by darthenra



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gestapo, Groundhog Day, Nazi Germany, Original Character(s), Original Story - Freeform, Original work - Freeform, School Project, Short Story, creative writing, not fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:21:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthenra/pseuds/darthenra
Summary: Set in 1941 Nazi Germany, a Jewish man has to relive his death every day. Consumed by the web of his lover, he must safe the young girl next door so she doesn't meet the same fate.
Kudos: 1





	Black Widow

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I made this story for one of my writing classes at university. The point of the project was to take something that was personal to you and create a short story about it. My family was really badly affected by WWII and the Nazis, so it was hard to write this story - but I ended up loving it and getting really wonderful feedback on it. Hope you enjoy <3

And there she was, wrapping her silk lies around me in her web. I had not known fear like this until I truly understood that I was trapped. I had not feared death like this until her jaws consumed me and drained the essence of my body, paralyzed. It was my own ignorance that made me fall and made me believe the rose film that blinded my eyes.

Had my love killed me or did love drive her insane?

That night rose to my imagination for the hundredth time. The constant reminder of the tragic future that I faced and its grip on my afterlife. The truth was written in the mirror as her dark silhouette stalked in the doorway. Each bone was defined in her limbs and cast a jagged shadow. The round curve of her solid knees knocked against each other as her legs curved with her height. The entrance of my eternal nightmare started like this. Her right hand fiddled with the loose string on her white dimity skirt. She twisted the string so tightly around her finger that there was a clear line cutting off the circulation in her index finger. Her skin was so thin, I always believed the string would win. With a light snap and flick of her wrist, the white strand fell to the floor. She looked me in the eyes. I couldn’t see her face due to the backlight yet the eyes shone through her shadow and swallowed me. The blue was so seemingly pure that it blended in with the whites of her eyes and in that light, only her shrunken pupils watched me. Then a tight curl of her lips revealed teeth just as white but crooked. The lips were drawn thin and surrounded the thick pink gums that held the smile in place. When she dragged my body out of the bedroom, I didn’t follow. I stayed there at the edge of the bed and I watched as her boney arms lifted me up and tossed me out the window.

I still visited that night often. Each time I noticed something different about the events. Maybe it was my own imagination, but I remembered my wife differently each time for the worse. Each visitation of that night led me to carefully look at each string of white hair that was out of place. No string was ever perfect. She lived symbiotically with her madness.

That night, the snow fell. A thud could be heard from the window and my wife watched. I walked to her where her frame stood at the balcony. She was as cold as the snow outside so she didn’t shake. Her knees knocked like before and her head hung low, the light curls of her silky blonde hair fell off her shoulders. Every time I remembered the memory, I wanted to see what she saw.

I looked over the balcony.

Not only mine, but many of my neighbours’ bodies lay on the snow-covered pavement. Limbs in mangled shapes. The blood-stained the bright white snow. The hot liquid pooled down the pavement and melted the ice. The blood trail flowed towards the sewers that drained the evidence. My Jewish comrades’ bones aligned, along with my own, to spell _death_ in Yiddish.

Each time I revisited the memory, I exhibited the same visceral emotion.

The window grew smaller with each step that I took backwards. The decorative table that displayed a dozen dead roses and an ashtray filled to the brim with tobacco ash, shook as my body connected with its surface. I lifted my hand to steady myself and there lay a Judenstern. My Jewish Star.

Except, I didn’t own a Judenstern before this night.

My wife’s blonde hair was like white silk in the moonlight. Its curls twisted past her eyes as they turned and looked at me and through me. Her eyes settled on the table that moved seconds before. Each step became heavy and filled with caution when she walked towards the Judenstern. I lifted my hand to look down and remembered that I told her I was Jewish two days before. I didn’t know about the existence of my Judenstern before this retelling. It wasn’t possible that she called the Nazis on me. She offed me herself. I opened my mouth again to say something, and her name escaped my lips.

“Heidi, what have you done to me?”

She stood by the table, half inside of me, and fixed the dead flowers. A few peddles fell and positioned themselves atop my badge. She looked pale, paler than usual – if that was possible. Her face twisted and bore her teeth bordered by a thin line of red. The contrast was as jarring as the blood that froze in the snow below.

“I’m finally free,” she whispered into the yellow patch, lifting it to her grin.

Her freedom of what I believed to be unknown was not the beginning of my curiosity but rather a clue to solving the reason behind my death.

Had her prejudice consumed her desire to love? Or was her love just a mask?

I followed her into the bathroom. There she stripped and I saw my wife differently. Had my wife known of my Jewish heritage before that night, she would have noticed that I didn’t have certain aspects of the male anatomy. And just as I missed parts of myself, I noted that she too was missing something. I saw my wife naked many times before that night, but I had never seen her alone. Did she always stretch the insides of her lips with her slender fingers behind closed doors? Apart from the fact that I saw every vertebra in her back, it was her skin that stretched over her ribs that intrigued me. But the thing that was the most different was her grasp of reality, which I awed at. To tell you the events next, you should understand that her body was as I recognized it, except she lacked her sanity.

Her white curls became darkened by the hot water and stuck to her shoulder blades. She stood in the shower, unmoved, and let the water roll around her. Heidi exited the shower without a towel and wiped the layer of steam from the mirror. The streaks filled again and she wiped it again. Each time she wiped the mirror she made a different face. The first face shifted first with her nose. As it crinkled her eyebrows perched at their highest point. She stretched her tongue as long as she could while lowering her chin. Once the fog settled on the mirror again she wiped it again. The last face she made was the same smile from the balcony. With a swift movement, she kept her gaze on herself in the mirror and she picked up her brush. Instead of lifting it to her hair, the bristles turned away and the back end connected with her nose.

Her knuckles bore their tendons underneath at the tight grasp. She repeated this motion until a trail of blood stained her teeth. She did the same thing until her eye gave way to the same fate.

I felt the drum of my fear fill the room.

My dead heart beat tremendously and risked our discovery.

I wasn’t aware that Heidi could hear it, too. As she turned and looked around the bathroom, my feet carried me backwards into the shower. Her eye was swollen and cried blood. The swollen tissue moved with each turn of her eyeball as it searched for the sound. I saw each of her red painted toes spread out with each step she took towards the shower. She stepped in and pressed her ear to the black and white tiles.

I saw how she killed me. It wasn’t the first time, but I often avoided this part of the memory.

I came home from work, tired. This wasn’t unusual. As an undercover Jewish man, I was forced in the working class of the communist party. Heidi made me dinner and afterwards, we went to the bathtub. I dressed again and looked for my belt. There it was near the edge of the bed, visible through the opened doorway.

My trance ended when Heidi wrapped herself in the silk housecoat that hung on the single hook in the bathroom and walked into our bedroom. She picked up the belt and put it in the dresser.

I followed her as far as the bed and heard a knock at the door.

Both our heads followed the sound.

With a trembling whimper, she called out, “who is it?”

“Heidi, is everything alright? Is Ezra home yet?” My neighbour’s wife’s voice was clear through the door even though she clearly tried to muffle her questions in the crack of the door. The second round of knocks came.

If I remembered their name, I could shout it. I could warn them not to enter the apartment.

I rushed towards the door before she could reach it and rested my hand against the lock. But with ease, she passed through me and unlocked the door.

“Heidi, we heard a commotion. Is everything alright?” The sliver of light that came in through the hallway illuminated her wet hair. I, too, peeked through the crack. The light revealed my neighbour, his wife, and their young daughter. I thanked the heavens that I remembered her name. Safie.

Safie looked right at me.

Heidi didn’t say anything.

“Oh, dear god, Heidi. Your eye, what happened?” My neighbour’s wife’s voice, filled with concern. Her hand lifted to Heidi’s face and pressed gently into her angular cheekbone. It was then that we both saw the Judenstern that was wrapped around her left arm. I looked down and Safie presented the same star.

Heidi opened the door wider. “They killed Ezra.”

I was taken back by the gasp that escaped my neighbour’s wife’s lips. Her hands covered her mouth and suddenly my death meant more. I had talked to them at least twice, but her reaction made it seem like she cared. _Someone cared._ Heidi looked over towards the balcony and pointed her long finger through me. Her bottom lip quivered as she said, “they tossed him off the balcony.”

She painted me in an instant as another victim of the Nazis and not her own selfish outrage. Safie’s dark eyes stayed glued behind my wife at me. Heidi froze, having noticed that the little girl’s gaze wasn’t fixated on her. Heidi followed where the young girl’s line of vision directed. Again, she looked through me.

My neighbour’s wife pushed the door open a little more and reached into the apartment towards my shaking wife. She wasn’t shaking from fear or pain, this was her normal state. Her hand rested on Heidi’s shoulder. Heidi’s head whipped back around as fast as her human head could turn. It startled my neighbour, but her compassion was based on pure assumption that my wife wasn’t a widow by choice. Heidi played the part well. “Let us in dear. There is more comfort in company than solitude.”

Heidi let the family in. Every night was like this.

My neighbour complained about the cold and found the source in seconds. He walked to the balcony that connected to the living room. I could tell by his posture that he looked down below. Did he notice my body amongst our brothers? He closed the doors that were still open since my body was disposed of.

“If you’ll excuse me, I should get dressed into something more appropriate,” Heidi said as she wrapped her arms around herself, tightening the robe around her thin body.

“Take your time, we will get everything ready for you.” My neighbour’s wife granted Heidi permission to slip away. Down the long hallway, Heidi could be seen slipping through the door of the bedroom and the turn of the lock was almost unheard to the other warm bodies that stood in my apartment.

Safie, who stood still in her spot in the front foyer, looked up at me. In the other room, her parents bickered in Yiddish on the possibilities of the events that took place before their arrival. She reached her hand out to touch my folded sleeve but her skin passed through whatever my body was now made of. Her melted chocolate brown eyes widened more than I thought was possible.

Her shock turned into a wonderous gaze and then slowly back into fear. It was forbidden in the Torah to communicate with spirits that weren’t angels, so she never asked me questions. Instead, she followed me, and I would point at different objects to give her clues.

“Safie, darling, what are you doing by the door?”

The hair on my neck stood up as Heidi passed right through me. Her face poked through my abdomen as she bent over to look at Safie. Safie’s large dark brown eyes followed her. What a sight for a young child. My wife’s angular face exited through my chest like a monster. I still thought to this version of today about how brave she was having not screamed her little heart out.

She took off her coat and then her hat. Her hair was cut to her ears, their ends curled towards her soft, plump cheekbones. The tips of her black hair looked as though they framed her fawn eyes. Unlike my wife’s eyes, the black pupil of Safie’s blended in with their dark shade giving the impression that her eyes gazed for miles.

There were two things that I was absolutely sure of when Heidi let the family in. Safie would make my presence known, but in doing so, her own life would be risked. I always tried to stop it, hide, or act like I didn’t see her, but I could never escape the child’s curiosity. She would always find me, she would always follow me, and she would always walk to the balcony.

“Dinner is ready.”

Heidi reached her hand towards the young Jewish girl, who looked at my wife in a silent sort of fear. Heidi’s smile was that of gentle compassion and comfort. How had I not seen through this mask before this fateful night? She was inviting Safie into her web. Safie made it a point to walk around me when she took those slender fingers in her short soft ones.

While they ate, they discussed my life. _“Bless his life,”_ they said as they raised their glasses. I was blessed and they prayed that my soul would be at peace, all while Safie looked at me. I put a finger to my lips, to which Safie nodded very lightly. After their prayers, they talked and ate. From this conversation, I learned that the camp in Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau, received over fifty thousand Jewish citizens in its seven months of use. I also learned that the Nazis were using blitzkrieg in England. The only reason why they were safe, was because my neighbour worked in the labour camp located in East Germany.

“Do you know what they’re calling us?” My neighbour asked my wife.

She said no and cut into her food.

“ _Lebensunwertes Leben_.” He shook his head as he said it.

My wife was born in Poland to German parents, both of which were seized by the Russians. Because of this, her German wasn’t the best. I looked past it in our short marriage, brushing off her attempts to learn as precious efforts. Heidi’s knit eyebrows expressed that of someone who was lost in translation. Having taught her the best I could up until my death, I assumed she knew _leben_ meant “life”. But her face showed that she forgot my efforts as she had been consumed by tricking me into her traps.

“Unworthy life,” my neighbour’s wife chimed in.

My neighbour released a sigh that was from the depths of his soul, pained and tired. “I’m just shocked that they got Ezra. Was he not German?”

When I was alive, I changed my last name and got rid of my kippah in order to protect my own life. My parents were furious at me and said that I turned my back on God. I met Heidi two months after I was kicked out. We were married a week and a half later towards the end of 1940.

Given our lives that met by chance, how would my neighbours ever know that I was Jewish?

Heidi’s body became frozen and she covered her mouth. I was only married to her for a year, but I knew what her smile looked like just by her eyes. To the blind eye, it looked as if she would cry. Her white eyebrows, almost unnoticeable to her skin, scrunched together and wrinkled her forehead. Her shoulders convulsed in a jagged motion and her eyes closed.

“No, child, don’t cry!” My neighbour’s wife stood in an instant and rushed to Heidi. She cautiously rested her hands on the widow’s shoulders. Heidi shook even harder and turned herself into my neighbour’s wife’s breasts.

“Safie, go play in the living room,” my neighbour ordered.

She obeyed and ran towards the couches. I followed.

Safie was a smart girl, above that she was kind. One day, she brought a kitten in from the cold and asked her parents if they could fix it. Her parents didn’t know how to react when their daughter brought a dead animal to their front door. Safie swore that it was alive and that it was meowing softly. Given that day and the night I relived over and over, I knew she saw the unfortunate dead.

I stood at the bookshelf that lined the wall which faced her.

She sat at the couch and swung her feet. Her heal hit the front of the couch each time her legs kicked back. Each thump lined itself with my heart like a metronome.

Heidi’s wild eyes now red with forced tears, looked towards the little girl. Before she could say anything I raised my finger to my lips, again, for Safie to stop. We must not aggravate the beast. She did so and I watched Heidi’s head turn back around at the absence of the noise. I sighed a breath of relief. Safie mimicked me. I knew this moment would come, the moment where I realized I could talk through Safie. But at what expense?

I knew Safie’s life was in danger each time I asked her to look at my Judenstern. I spent days forcing my arm to lower, but each time, another force of nature would make Safie notice the yellow star that lied beside the dead red roses. It was as if they whispered to her, too, like me and the kitten.

In this version of my imagination, the wind rattled the balcony doors. My legs forced me towards the side table and I pointed. I had no control over my memories so I imagined that my arm wasn’t my own. I imagined it was Heidi’s. I pictured Heidi using my body to lure others.

Safie looked over to the side table and each night her mouth dropped. My Judenstern was much larger than hers, but it showed that we were of the same “unworthy life”.

Safie’s head twisted towards the adults, all had their backs towards her. She reached out a hand and grabbed the Judenstern while still monitoring the other’s movements. She stuffed it into the front pocket of her dress. I knew how this night ended. Her parents would find it and she would tell them that I was Jewish.

I couldn’t change what happened to me. If there was a chance to save Safie’s life, it was impossible to change. I tried. The memory always ended with my neighbour’s swollen nose and tear-stained cheeks at my door, telling Heidi that the Nazi’s took his wife and child.

As I looked into Safie’s eyes, it became clear to me that I was doing something wrong. I was static and complacent. I was _letting_ her die each time because I knew that I would revisit that night. This night wasn’t about me, it was about her. I had relived this night for years…or rather, died on this night for years. I could never save her because I never let her live past this night.

“Safie,” I reached out and the room became black. What was left was the couch, the balcony doors, Safie and I. This never happened in my memory before, so suddenly I had a voice to speak. “Safie, listen to me, when you show your parents my star, tell them you need to run. You don’t have much time. You need to run far away. Get on the next boat and go.”

My desperation caused my voice to raise. It wasn’t out of anger, but my fear rang through the apartment and the black conscious of Safie’s mind reverted back to my living room. The balcony doors swung open and everyone within the vicinity of the cold breeze jumped from their seats. I heard my neighbour say a silent prayer as the air bit his skin. I pointed out the door and Safie ran to the balcony.

“Safie, don’t!” Her father screamed.

The young girl wore only a dress and tights. She stepped into the snow. Her small feet barely made a dent in the packed pillow of white. I turned my head away because I knew what she saw. It was only when her crying became loud that I knew she saw it. I knew she saw me.

It was a horrible thing to have a child do. I only wanted to help her.

Her father ran past me and towards his daughter, who shivered from more than just the cold. His comforting whispers came out in Yiddish but her wails continued. He lifted her small body up and into his. Her small face hid in his bearded neck and she held on tightly. The sobs were louder than my wife’s repeated ‘sorry’.

“I am so sorry, Heidi. We should really go. If you ever need us, we are right next door.” In a hurry, my neighbours began to get ready.

As the door closed behind them and Safie’s muddled confessions drowned out. Heidi made a run for the phone. My feet carried away towards her like they always did, but now there was a different kind of movement to them. I wasn’t running because I was afraid of the phone call, I was running because I knew the phone call wouldn’t work this time.

At least, I trusted it wouldn’t work.

I could only imagine Safie took what I said as truth and she told her parents. I hoped and prayed that Safie listened to what I said and that her parents took what they could and left Berlin. I would rather die for good than relive Safie’s death.

The operator could be heard over Heidi’s laboured breathing. She begged to speak to authorities. Unlike the other nights, I felt pride. I didn’t want to celebrate early, but part of me couldn’t resist. I pressed my lips to her left ear, the one that was connected to the receiver of the rotary dial phone, I prayed that the static would pick up my voice. I used my newfound sound at that moment and said,

“She knows what you did, Heidi.”

Her knuckled knees hit against each other and she collapsed to the floor, the line of the phone dropping to the floor where the static replaced my voice once more. Her lungs inflated and deflated viciously with each breath. She grabbed her hair and curled into a ball on the floor.

Her wails sounded like the long cry of a wounded animal.

I watched my wife fall apart in front of my eyes. This had never happened in my memory before. I had transcended my memory. I was back in the winter of 1941.

The machine was still on, I knew I could communicate with her through the phone, so I lowered myself to the ground and spoke carefully, so as to not anger her.

“Heidi,” she stopped her sounds of sorrow quickly and looked at the phone. Her arm, longer than I remembered, reached for the phone. She pulled the chord towards her ear and I spoke softly again. “why did you kill me, Heidi?”

Her silence didn’t last long and it was replaced by a low breath of hair. Once it became rhythmic, I realized she was laughing. She stifled her laugh for a second to say, “you’re not here.” The laughing resumed as tears filled her eyes.

“Answer my question.”

“Why did I kill my dear Ezra?” As if she tricked the dead, she put on a show. “The Nazi’s threw his body over the balcony. They threw him over the balcony and beat me for loving a Jew.” Her face didn’t change as she said this, but a fake cry rang out through her lungs. There was no hint of sadness only forced sniffles. She didn’t blink and she didn’t shed a single tear. Her insanity had reached its max.

“You’re lying.”

Her lips stretched. “What gave it away?”

“Because I can see you.”

Her jaw lowered and she became suddenly aware of her surroundings. “Where are you if you can see me?”

“I am where you left me.”

She lifted herself up from the ground, bending her legs and arms at angles that would break them if she tried. She stood and held the phone to her ear. “You mean at the balcony?”

I stood in a second and lowered my lips to the receiver again. “Yes.”

She walked towards the open doors. The phone stretched to its limits and the heavy end of the automatic phone fell from the table, pulling the plug out of the wall. She walked to the balcony. Her toes dug into the snow. Her skin blended in with the substance under the souls of her feet. The frozen rain drifted lightly down and rested on her shoulders and head.

“It should have been me,” she whispers into the phone.

“Heidi,” I hesitated. I knew it was my time, but I was stuck in the afterlife because my purpose wasn’t complete yet, “did you ever love me?”

A few seconds of silence passed. 

“Yes.”

Her long legs stepped onto the ledge of the balcony. The snow that settled on its surface had fallen to the ground or packed under her lightweight. She dropped the phone.

“Heidi, no!” I reached out to her wrist, but I passed through.

She must’ve heard my voice because she turned around in a bewildered motion. She looked down at me. She finally saw me.

“I have to be free.”

I didn’t watch it. This wasn’t my memory, I didn’t have to. I turned away. I heard the ground shift from a body added. I closed my eyes. Finally, my nightmare was over.

“Ezra?”

My name was spoken from inside my house. I opened my eyes and saw a woman standing near the balcony’s doors. I didn’t recognize her at first, but the plump cheeks of what was once Safie’s young complexion were now stretched with age. Safie wore clothes I didn’t recognize, and her hair was styled in a tight bun behind her head. She looked older and wiser than me.

My words were lost in the air. “Safie?”

I whipped my head around. Berlin had changed. There was no wall, the sun was shining and the clouds were a light pink. I had never seen such a beautiful sight. How had I become so unaware of my nightmare that darkness consumed a beautiful future for Germany? I looked down and the streets were cleaned and the same cobblestone from before carried the new generations of Europe. I felt as though….I did this. I turned around at Safie, who let me look around in wonder. A smile stretched onto her face. It was kind like she had always been.

“I’ve come to set you free, Ezra. It’s been too long.” She pulled a clear plastic rectangle that had a metal cap along with something else in her purse. I realized in the light from the setting sun that it was my Judenstern.

“You remembered me..” My throat tightened.

“You saved my life. How could I forget?” She pressed her thumb against the wheel on the metal cap and a flame emerged from the hole. “Your soul should rest now. Enjoy the afterlife.” She lifted my Judenstern to the flame and I felt a warmth fill my body. “Don’t come back.” She said with a laugh.

It wasn’t me that was supposed to live, it was Safie. Now _I_ was finally free.


End file.
